1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an input mechanism for use with a display unit for displaying information about each of the parts of a living body or with a living body measuring apparatus having capability of displaying the measurement result.
2. Prior Art
Recently, a number of apparatus for readily measuring and managing various body compositions of a living body have been developed and utilized for health care.
It was highly desired to precisely know the body compositions of a living body, and accordingly, various apparatus for measuring body fat mass, amount of muscle, etc., for a specified part of the body such as a hand, a foot or a main body and for displaying the measurement result have become in popular.
Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-178696 of the present applicant discloses an apparatus for measuring the body fat mass, amount of muscle, etc., for each of the parts of a human body such as right and left hands and feet based on the bioelectrical impedance and for displaying the measurement result.
The living body measuring apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-178696 is designed to calculate and display the body fat mass, amount of muscle, etc., for each of the parts of the body on a dot-matrix type touch panel LCD. However, such measuring apparatus is defective in that the data for each of the parts of the body is successively displayed only in the predetermined order, and as the result, it may be necessary to repeatedly depress the key on the screen several times in order to display the data for the specified part of the body. In addition, the dot-matrix type touch panel LCD is very expensive.
On the other hand, a segment type LCD has been used for displaying the information about a plurality of the parts of the body at a time. However, in such apparatus, it becomes necessary to provide a display unit including a plurality of stages and a plurality of digits. Therefore, the display unit becomes bulky and adds the manufacturing cost.
Alternatively, a small sized segment type LCD may be used for successively displaying the information about each of the parts of the body in the predetermined order. However, if it is desired to know only information about specified part of the body, as is desired by a sport player, it may take longer period of time to display such necessary information.
Accordingly, if only information about specified part of a person is desired to display, it is considered preferable to provide a plurality of switches each dedicated for xe2x80x9ca right handxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ca left handxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9ca right footxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9ca left footxe2x80x9d of the person, for instance, and to depress any one of the switches for displaying the information about specified part of the body. In such case, however, a sufficient space is necessary to install those switches within the apparatus, which adds the manufacturing cost.
In view of the above an object of the present invention is to solve the problems in the prior art, as described above, and to provide an improved input mechanism that is simple in construction and can readily retrieve only necessary information about specified part of a human body.
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided an input device, comprising: a numerical value input unit; a storage unit; and a control unit, wherein said numerical value input unit consists of numeric keys, said storage unit stores the data for each of the parts of a human body, and said control unit operates in such manner that each of the parts of the human body is assigned any one of the numeric keys and when a specific numeric key is depressed the data for the part designated thereby is retrieved from the storage unit. Accordingly, a user can promptly designate any of the parts of the human body.
In one embodiment of the input device according to the present invention a body pattern of a human body is depicted on a member covering the numeric keys so that there is correspondence produced between the numeric keys and the parts of the human body. Accordingly, a user can promptly understand which of the numeric keys correspond to which of the parts of the body.
In another embodiment of the input device the member covering the numeric keys is provided with a mark indicating the direction of right-hand side or left-hand side. Accordingly a user can easily know which is right-hand side or which is left-hand side.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a living body information apparatus, comprising: a numerical value input unit; a storage unit; a control unit, and a display unit, wherein said numerical value input unit consists of numeric keys, said storage unit stores the data for each of the parts of a human body, said control unit operates in such manner that each of the parts of the human body is assigned any one of the numeric keys and when a specific numeric key is depressed the data for the part designated thereby is retrieved from the storage unit, and said display unit displays the retrieved data for that part of the body. Accordingly, a user can promptly designate any of the parts of the human body for which the measurement result is desired to display.
According to further aspect of the present invention there is provided a living body information apparatus, comprising: a numerical value input unit; a measuring unit; a storage unit; a control unit, and a display unit, wherein said numerical value input unit consists of numeric keys, said measuring unit measures the parameter for each of the parts of a human body, said storage unit stores the measured parameter for each of parts of the human body, said control unit operates in such manner that each of the parts of the human body is assigned any one of the numeric keys and when a specific numeric key is depressed the data for the part designated thereby is retrieved from the storage unit, and said display unit displays the retrieved data for that part of the body. Accordingly, a user can promptly designate any of the parts of the human body for which the measurement result is desired to display.
In one embodiment of the living body information apparatus according to the present invention a body pattern of a human body is depicted on a member covering the numeric keys so that there is correspondence produced between the numeric keys and the parts of the human body. Accordingly, a user can readily understand which of the numeric keys correspond to which of the parts of the body.
In another embodiment of the living body information apparatus the member covering the numeric keys is provided with a mark indicating the direction of right-hand side or left-hand side. Accordingly a user can easily know which is right-hand side or which is left-hand side.